Proud of my country?

I’m conscious of John of Gaunt’s pride in his country, and find myself thinking what can I be proud of in today’s England (or Britain)? I’m proud of the NHS, battered and constrained as it is, and hope it endures to look after me in my final years. I feel a great sense of loyalty to it: my mother trained as a children’s nurse as it came into existence, and made sure we had all that it offered to keep us healthy as children, all the jabs, the free orange juice and rose hip syrup and codliver oil.

My father was an exile from Poland, and after the war ended nobody wanted him and his comrades any more: they were foreigners, taking away jobs from the British etc etc – where have we heard that one recently? Reluctantly he and his mates were allowed to remain, all sorts of obstacles were put in their way, they were used and exploited. Nevertheless he was loyal to his adoptive country and eventually took British nationality.

My memories of my younger days are of a country that provided work for almost everyone, benefits (paltry, perhaps) for those that needed them, grants for students rather than loans, and offered supplementary benefits, as they were called back then, even to students who did not find work in the holidays. There were very few people living on the streets and no foodbanks. There was unemployment and poverty, but not the outright misery and destitution as we see nowadays.

Although I regarded it as my right, I had eight years of state support through my studies, and I recognise the value of what the country invested in me; equally, I can see that I paid it all back over the years through taxation and through service as a teacher.

Back in the past housing was affordable and rents were controlled: one income would support a family, even my father’s meagre wages, supplemented by overtime and some moonlighting. And although he always loathed them, trade unions were able to defend the working people and ensure a reasonable standard of wages, working conditions and pensions.

I remember grand projects: Concorde, Intercity 125 trains, the struggle to join the Common Market which became the European Community and then the European Union. All of my travel as a student was made so much easier by our membership, and I was glad of the new-found freedom, and the ability to encounter other peoples and cultures.

Like any old codger, I’m waxing lyrical about the days of my youth. But I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and Reagan’s cruise missiles and I did not feel as endangered then as I do now under the rule of incompetent liars. I lived through the so-called winter of discontent in 1978-9; it wasn’t that bad and there certainly wasn’t the feeling of impending doom that many of us are currently fighting off.

I have seen so much that was not perfect but that was decent enough, and certainly far better than we have now, deliberately demolished, destroyed and sold off to other countries through the greed and rapaciousness started by Thatcher and her cronies. I don’t need to ponder why there is a housing crisis, a shortage of homes: I remember what she did. I don’t need to bother my head with whether Johnson or Truss was a worse prime minister, as Thatcher scoops all the awards there.

There are many good things in the history of our country and these islands; there are as many dark pages, and the difference between us and a country like Germany, for instance, is that we do not wish to confront and recognise that dark past; we are waylaid and misled by those who think that our past glories mean we are automatically entitled to a glorious future… We are a small island off the coast of Europe, that Europe can ignore without too great a loss; it’s not the same the other way round.

More than anything I have an image of a country with its head in the sand, ruled by an aristocracy which has embedded itself deep in our national psyche over a millennium; we invented a form of democracy a couple of centuries back and think it’s still fit for purpose; we are collectively unwilling to face the challenges of the future, whether they are economic or meteorological, and we allow rich and vested interests shamelessly to play to the darkest sides of people in order to hang on to their privilege.

I have very mixed feelings about England and Britain. It’s my home, for better or worse. There are things I have been grateful for; there are things I love, but increasingly there are things I truly despair about.

On the NHS

I try to avoid political posts, as I’m of an age where the state of our country and the world makes me want to rant. Today, however, is quite a special day for us British, and I want to pay tribute to an institution which I have been fortunate enough to be able to take for granted for my entire life.

My mother trained as a nurse and worked for the NHS right at its very beginning; one of my sisters is currently a children’s nurse in a specialised burns unit. The NHS isn’t perfect, by any means, but it’s there. It doesn’t look after my eyesight, and I’ve chosen not to let it look after my teeth. But it did wonders for my deteriorating hearing in the final years of my teaching career, and it has helped me carry on walking normally with my wonky feet. So far I’ve never needed treatment in A&E, but I know many who have. And, pace any US readers, it’s there, without any need to flash a credit card at the ambulance driver…

The NHS may exemplify the nanny state; if so, I’m all for it. If I am to have any loyalty to a state, to which I constantly pay taxes, I’d like to feel it’s looking after me in return. And there are precious few things I can feel proud of in my country today. I feel much safer with the NHS behind me than I do with all the ridiculous amounts of money wasted on weapons and armaments.

People complain that the NHS wastes money; I’m sure it does, but no more than any other branch of government – we just rarely get to hear about how much the Ministry of Defence wastes, or the Department for Education: what the NHS does is visible to everyone.

I like the idea that the NHS sprang from the idea that one of the basic necessities of life, decent healthcare, should be equally available to everyone, without anyone having to worry about the upfront cost. To me, there are quite a few other necessities that deserve a similar approach, but I won’t go into that at the moment. I said earlier that I take the NHS for granted; so do we all, I think. And it needs to be paid for, and I, for one, don’t resent what I have paid towards it. People are living longer – and I hope to be one of those – and have expectations about more complex levels of treatment than used to be available: we need to accept that all this needs to be paid for, and agree to it. If taxes need to rise, so be it.

When people talk about the nanny state and the way it ‘interferes’ in our lives, I find myself thinking that actually rather more nanny state might be a good idea in some ways: if the government is looking after us, why isn’t it being more active in regulating the junk that is sold as food and drink, and which contributes so considerably to health problems for so many? Then the NHS would have more money to spend treating unavoidable illnesses…

But I was going to try and be non-political today. I was political here, if you want politics.

So, thank you to the NHS for taking out my tonsils, for providing rose-hip syrup, orange juice and revolting cold-liver oil to build me up as a child, for the scary visits to what we called the ‘prick shop’ for our childhood jabs; for all the GP visits, blood tests, heart investigations, checking my poo for bowel cancer, and I don’t know what else. Without presenting me with a bill at the cash-desk. An organisation I have always felt proud of.

On living in Thatcher’s Britain

Unashamedly political post follows: you have been warned.

I had planned to write on this theme before the recent election; I think it’s just as relevant now. I can’t believe I’m watching the madness they call Brexit, reading about the obscenities of the Grenfell Tower fire and countless other craziness. I have long felt that many of the things that are wrong with our country can be ascribed to Thatcher’s Britain: her evil legacy has infected us for years and will continue to plague for years to come.

Let’s be clear what I mean here: she said that there is no such thing as society. I’m not interested in the semantics of what she actually meant by it, because her attitude and the attitudes of those who latched on to her words and have shaped Britain for the last forty years are self-evident. She unleashed a culture of ‘me first’, of the worst kind of selfishness: I have money and I can do what I want with it, so get out of my way…

There is no sense of duty or responsibility to poorer members of society, to the old, the sick, those without work; in the harshest possible Calvinistic manner, it’s all their fault, and they should do something about it. We thought such attitudes had long gone after the post-war settlement and the advent of the NHS and the Welfare State, but instead Thatcherism has taught two generations to despise what was built then, and done incalculable physical and moral damage to our society (yes, society!).

It seems plain to me that if we are expected to feel any sense of loyalty to our state or our country (however you want to look at it) then it should give one the feeling of having something to feel loyalty towards. If the state wants the loyalty of its citizens, then it has a duty to ensure that everyone has access to affordable housing and healthcare, fuel, water, education and modern communications, to enable them to feel secure first… such things as these, which everyone needs, should not be provided by those who put the profit motive before everything else. If the state makes a loss providing these, then taxpayers will pay more to make up the shortfall; if the state makes a profit then we all benefit from lower taxes.

Our national infrastructure is gradually falling to bits; large parts of it have been sold to other countries, who subsidise their countries from the profits they make from us… can this possibly make sense?

To me, a child of the Welfare State and proud of it, the above seems obvious. But there are many millions who now don’t understand it. As a nation we have always expected to have things on the cheap – firstly from living off the backs of colonies and empire, then from the supposed benefits of ‘privatisation’. I cannot believe that so many people are thrilled with spending considerable amounts of time and energy trying to find the best ‘deal’ when buying gas, electricity, a train ticket, a phone or internet contract, without ever being sure that they have succeeded… saving a few pounds here and there, perhaps, whilst ensuring that the fat cats get richer and richer from the proceeds. I’ve better things to do with my time, and actually long for the days when the state supplied these utilities, and I paid and got on with my life…

We are told that the 1960s and 1970s were a period of chaos, almost anarchy, when the trade unions wrecked the country. That’s not the country I remember; I remember a more caring and rather more unified society, where the poor and the sick and the unemployed were not vilified for what they could not help and often had not brought on themselves. Now I’m living in a time of chaos and anarchy, with big business and the Conservative (ha, ha, fine choice of word, that one!) party busy doing far more harm than any trade union ever did. I’m grateful that my trade union fought for semi-decent working conditions and a reasonable pension which I can now enjoy, and think that rather more people need to take up that fight again today.

I have been heartened by some of the outcomes of the election and begun to think that perhaps almost enough people are fed up of the meanness, the divisiveness, the greed and the squalor that Thatcherism has brought to this country. We shall see; I’m not holding my breath, but it would be nice to spend my declining years in a rather fairer and happier place than today’s Britain.

Do we still want the NHS?

Unashamedly political post follows…you have been warned.

As a nation I feel we’ve shot ourselves in both feet voting to leave the EU; I’m sure it will happen and we will be able to repent at leisure. But, for my money, the biggest error is one we are making through neglect, or ignorance: the loss of the NHS.

Think about this: the Tories have been in power for seven years, during which time they have, in a drip-feed manner, made the NHS less effective through constant re-organisation and underfunding, brought in more profit-making private providers, and under-resourced it. There is a constant trickle of stories about clinical errors, longer waiting lists, people ‘wasting’ NHS time and resources: the right-wing press is doing its bit in undermining a national resource.

Over time, the gradual – and, I think deliberate – effect of this is to make more and more people, especially younger people who have never known anything else, or really had to think about healthcare at all, think that the NHS is inefficient, is broken, and cannot cope any more: if this is the case, then – the next stage of the right-wingers’ proposal goes, surely something needs to be done about it… Increasingly the arguments are, well there are more people to treat (especially immigrants and free-loaders from abroad), people are living much longer and therefore need care for much longer, and treatment is increasingly technological and expensive. Of course, a state-provided service can’t possibly deliver all this, it is suggested…

And so, when the Tories decide they can be bold enough to suggest privatising parts or the whole thing – in the interests of giving people better care, of course – enough people may believe them, and allow them to get away with it. And there will be the mantra that the NHS will always be free ‘at the point of delivery’ (whatever that means. Does anyone know?). Perhaps GP visits and A&E will be free, and beyond that, one will have to pay or take out additional insurance.

The great majority of British people have been born and have grown up looked after by the NHS, and have taken it for granted all their lives. We know nothing about how alternative systems work or what they cost – though again we are often told (by whom?) how much better other countries’ health care is than our own – though we may have heard horror stories from the USA, but we’d never end up with that, would we? Hmm. How much time do you want to spend comparing health plans, costs and so on to make sure you have the right deal? But then, since the privatisation of everything else, we have a generation used to doing cost-comparisons on websites for train tickets, energy, broadband: maybe people won’t mind. And if they can get a bargain…

Should you be worried? Well,if you’re inexorably moving towards old age, if the system that’s looked after you throughout your life disappears, what do you do instead? If you don’t have the disposable income to fund private healthcare? Of course, the pill can be sugared: look, we’ll reduce National Insurance payments when we sell-off the NHS, so you can now choose (magic word, there!) your own provider, and how much to spend…

The profit motive is expensive: profit has to be factored into the cost of everything. Of course, allegedly private enterprise is more efficient (it has done wonders for our railways, after all), so will be cheaper. I have to say, if I were seriously ill, in need of major surgery or intensive care, efficiency would not be my first criterion. Skill, care, empathy, things like those would be at the top of my list.

Declaration of interest: my mother was one of the first cohort of nurses to be trained by the infant NHS, and I have a sister who currently works for the NHS. If asked, I’d be hard-pressed to think of any contemporary aspect of our country that I’m prouder of than our health service. And plenty of other countries actually envy us. Give the Tories another five or ten years, and will we still have the NHS? Do enough people actually care?